Sunset Garden Recap

Thank you for the wonderful feedback so many of you have given on my Wholehearted quilt finish shared a couple of days ago which was made entirely of organic hemp/cottons and organic cottons by Umbrella Prints. I do enjoy creating a wide variety of quilt styles.    :)

Today I'm sharing an abridged version of the story of my Sunset Garden quilt for the Blogger's Quilt Festival, entering in the Large Quilt's section. If you are looking for quilt inspiration this biannual online Festival is a great place to start with hundreds of quilts amongst the 11 categories.

You can find the full story of Sunset Garden in this post from last month, written when it was just completed. 

My primary inspiration was this quilt by Blue Elephant Stitches which took my eye quite some time ago. However I liked the idea of using all solid backgrounds and larger blocks. I set to work fiddling with size and construction ideas based on Blue Elephant Stitches' similar 'liberated stars' quilt here. I planned the sizing and cutting layouts to require only a fat quarter of each solid and a fabric piece 10" x 17 1/2" for each print/star fabric (you could cut  two 'stars' from a printed fat quarter). This allows for generous seams too.

My stars are neither 'wonky' nor precise sawtooth stars. I chose to enjoy the journey and eyeball much of my sewing, calling them 'relaxed' stars, while making sure all centre point 'V's' were complete, not clipped off, and ensuring a good margin of solid all the way around the star points for easy seams and later hand quilting. 

Using heavy 12wt cotton thread I machine quilted along the seam lines of each block to secure the quilt well. At this point I trimmed and added the binding.

Then began my favourite part - hand quilting in contrasting silk threads! A perfect winter slow sewing activity.

 The quilt after washing, line drying and finishing on low in the dryer to help soften and smooth the delicious crinkles.

My youngest three children volunteered to hold the quilt for me, for it is quite large. Each finished block is about 14 1/2" square with the complete quilt measuring 58" x 73" (147cm x 185cm).

I had wondered whether to keep this quilt or offer it for sale in my Etsy shop. It was my husband who voted that we keep it, even he likes the saturated colours! So keep it we did! It is currently in use on our bed on top of Sunlit Treasure, our full size queen quilt, to give extra warmth on our cooler spring nights.